Here my comment to the Bookforum review:
which I also sent to the reviewer at Faster Times, he is an editor at the sorry publication.
"This is an atrocity!
1]
Let me address the Yugoslavia/ Milosevic/ Serbia canard first.
Your reviewer appears to be medianized and not be able to think on his own.
Yugoslavia became a tinderbox, in part because of some Reagan are
National Security directives to commit economic warfare against the East bloc; in part because Socialism, also the kindlier one in Yugoslavia, was being hollowed out; it was being replaced by resurgent nationalist tribal identity formations of all kind; and then the German foreign minister Gentscher recognized the Croatian fascist successor state under Tjudman; andTjudman made the Serbians into 2nd class citizens - that was the signal for all the murderous ghosts of WW II and older to come out of the closet: the blame game gets no one anywhere; understanding might. Handke for
personal reasons was always close to Yugoslavia as a whole, especially because he is half Slovenian: he was absolutely correct in coming to the defense of the Serbians once they started being blamed - it is hard to say who is to blame more: everyone became murderous. The U.S. supplied Croatia with arms, the Bosniak Muslims with 300 mujaheddin and also with arms. Handke can be said to have behaved like a crazily wounded love child, not attractive at all. The only matter that can be held against him in his extraordinary act of exhibitionism is that when asked by Milosevic to testify as an expert witness at his trial in Scheveningen, that he then blinked. That is bad enough as far as I am concerned and I will neverbe again in a position where I might have to rely on him - not that Handke's testimony in Milosevic's case might have made an iota of a difference in the foregone conclusion of a guilty verdict on the
part of a kangaroo court that might more usefully have put various US generals and statespeople on trial. If you and your reviewer are interested in more detailed version of the above, I suggest that my http://handke-discussion.blogspot.com/ you where I will also post
2] a long piece on Don Juan. The reviewer is 40 years behind in his Handke. Even if he weren't I doubt that he would catch on to the
game that Handke is playing. As a former New York publisher I wouldn't hire him to read and evaluate a single book! He doesn't understand either the game, nor the form, nor the underlying sorrowful tone on which the artist plays so merrily. He is also wrong on the details he mentions - such as Don Juan not exchanging glances with his various lovers; sometimes it is just a glance where both parties are set aflame; sometimes it is a mating; his sidekick chauffeur with whom he reverses roles at moments is a wonderfully gross Caliban type; there is also a Juanita at one point.
This is such a hopeless review, one is then glad of the philistine job
that Joel Agee did in the New York Times Book Review http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/books/review/Agee-t.html?scp=1&sq=joel%20agee&st=cse
1]
Let me address the Yugoslavia/ Milosevic/ Serbia canard first.
Your reviewer appears to be medianized and not be able to think on his own.
Yugoslavia became a tinderbox, in part because of some Reagan are
National Security directives to commit economic warfare against the East bloc; in part because Socialism, also the kindlier one in Yugoslavia, was being hollowed out; it was being replaced by resurgent nationalist tribal identity formations of all kind; and then the German foreign minister Gentscher recognized the Croatian fascist successor state under Tjudman; andTjudman made the Serbians into 2nd class citizens - that was the signal for all the murderous ghosts of WW II and older to come out of the closet: the blame game gets no one anywhere; understanding might. Handke for
personal reasons was always close to Yugoslavia as a whole, especially because he is half Slovenian: he was absolutely correct in coming to the defense of the Serbians once they started being blamed - it is hard to say who is to blame more: everyone became murderous. The U.S. supplied Croatia with arms, the Bosniak Muslims with 300 mujaheddin and also with arms. Handke can be said to have behaved like a crazily wounded love child, not attractive at all. The only matter that can be held against him in his extraordinary act of exhibitionism is that when asked by Milosevic to testify as an expert witness at his trial in Scheveningen, that he then blinked. That is bad enough as far as I am concerned and I will neverbe again in a position where I might have to rely on him - not that Handke's testimony in Milosevic's case might have made an iota of a difference in the foregone conclusion of a guilty verdict on the
part of a kangaroo court that might more usefully have put various US generals and statespeople on trial. If you and your reviewer are interested in more detailed version of the above, I suggest that my http://handke-discussion.blogspot.com/ you where I will also post
2] a long piece on Don Juan. The reviewer is 40 years behind in his Handke. Even if he weren't I doubt that he would catch on to the
game that Handke is playing. As a former New York publisher I wouldn't hire him to read and evaluate a single book! He doesn't understand either the game, nor the form, nor the underlying sorrowful tone on which the artist plays so merrily. He is also wrong on the details he mentions - such as Don Juan not exchanging glances with his various lovers; sometimes it is just a glance where both parties are set aflame; sometimes it is a mating; his sidekick chauffeur with whom he reverses roles at moments is a wonderfully gross Caliban type; there is also a Juanita at one point.
This is such a hopeless review, one is then glad of the philistine job
that Joel Agee did in the New York Times Book Review http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/books/review/Agee-t.html?scp=1&sq=joel%20agee&st=cse
.MICHAEL ROLOFF
http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name
Member Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society
This LYNX will LEAP you to my HANDKE project sites and BLOGS
http://www.handke.scriptmania.com/favorite_links_1.html
http://www.roloff.freehosting.net/index.html
"Degustibus disputandum est." Theodor Wiesenthal Adorno
"May the foggy dew bediamondize your hoosprings + the fireplug
of filiality reinsure your bunghole! {James Joyce}
"Sryde Lyde Myde Vorworde Vorhorde Vorborde." [von Alvensleben]
"Siena me fe, disfescimi Maremma." [Dante]
"Ennui [Lange Weile] is the dreambird that hatches the egg of
experience." Walter Benjamin, the essay on Leskov.
http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/
http://summapolitico.blogspot.com/
http://artscritic.blogspot.com/.
http://seattle-vistas.blogspot.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment